I’m hoping I’ve caught you procrastinating and willing to provide a little critical feedback today. First and most important, I’m struggling to decide on the title of my current work in progress. I know that I’ve sung the praises of running market research on titles before, but google raised their prices and I can’t quite stomach throwing $100 at deciding on a book title. So I hope you’ll take thirty seconds to follow this link and vote on your favorite title if you’re a reader of urban fantasy.

And if you’re feeling particularly bored, perhaps you’ll also check out my brand new author website and give me your thoughts on it as well. There are a few things I still want to fix, but feel free to suggest changes anyway — I want to make it professional and enticing!

In case you’re curious (or thinking of making a new author website yourself), I opted to host through InMotion and used the paid theme Precious Lite Pro to make building the site easier. My primary goal was to make a quality email-list signup page since I’m thinking of trying facebook ads, but I also want to give true fans somewhere to go for extras and other perks. Which is all a long way of saying — feel free to be harsh in your criticisms! I want it to look nice. What do you think?

Despite frequent recommendations, I put off reading Libbie Hawker’s Take Off Your Pants for far too long. I’d somehow gotten it into my head that the book was about writing an outline, which sounded like the driest topic imaginable. Imagine my surprise when I glanced over the first page and discovered that Hawker was instead presenting a concise, well-thought-out tactic for crafting a riveting, tightly written novel. (Okay, yes, and she also mentions drafting outlines near the end.)

You’ll really want to read the book yourself since it costs only three bucks and can be consumed in about an hour and a half. But the gist is simple: the best stories are based on the protagonists’s greatest flaw. The identity of the antagonist and the type of both internal and external conflicts all stem directly from that flaw, and the most satisfying conclusion results when the hero overcomes that flaw.

I’m about halfway through the first draft of my current work in progress, and I thought I’d plotted the story out pretty well. But as I read Hawker’s tips, I realized that a weak chapter a third of the way through was missing an important element of her suggested structure and her book also helped me fill in a gap late in the plot that was giving me fits.

If you give the book a try and want to plot your next (or current) novel using Hawker’s techniques, I drafted a cheat sheet based on her book. The file I’ve linked to probably won’t make much sense if you haven’t already taken off your pants, but hopefully it’ll be a handy addendum once you’ve done the required reading.

What’s up next? Save the Cat was one of the original plotting books that got me off to a good start, and I think the next one on my recommended reading list is The Hero With a Thousand Faces. I’d be curious to hear if you’ve enjoyed other books on story structure (or if you think any kind of canned story outline is heresy) in the comments. Or perhaps you’d like to share your own experience with biting the bullet and leaving behind your pantser ways.

And now, on an entirely different note, I wanted to plug Patty Jensen’s FREE sci-fi and fantasy giveaway. I hope you’ll click through and check out the page since there are literally dozens of books to choose from, all of which can be downloaded free today only. The covers alone are inspiring, and I’m particularly planning on checking out the science fiction and fantasy romance section near the bottom of the page.

Why am I plugging someone else’s giveaway? Because I have a book included, of course. And this seemed like a good opportunity to talk about one of the best ways I’ve found to advertise books on the cheap — teaming up with other authors who write in your genre. Multi-author box sets (which I’ve written about previously) are one way to do this on a large scale. But smaller promos like this one can also significantly increase sales without making a dent in your budget. Other options I’ve used include recommending an author whose books are very similar to yours in your newsletter while they do the same for you. And, if you specifically write in the fields of science fiction and fantasy and want to be involved in Patty’s next giveaway, there’s a tab at the top of her promo page with more information so you can apply for the February sale.

And now I’ll open the floor to you. What’s your favorite way to cross-promote with other authors? How do you build those important social networks? Which techniques have and haven’t worked for you?

The newest book is always the most interesting, so I’m going to follow Marcia’s lead and post the first few paragraphs from my unedited work-in-progress, currently titled Outpack. This upcoming book in an entirely new trilogy is a spinoff following one of the side characters you may have read about in Wolf Rampant. Fen is a half-werewolf trying to make it in the cold, hard world. But I’ll let her speak for herself….

***

Three shifters walked into a bar.

It sounds like the beginning of a corny joke, doesn’t it?

But here’s a little more information for you. I was those shifters’ alpha and den mother rolled into one. Two of the barhoppers were jail bait or close to it. And the establishment in question was filled to the brim with horny, lawless, outpack males.

No wonder I wasn’t laughing and was in a big hurry.

I breezed past the bouncer with a show of entirely human teeth, then rolled my eyes at his laxness. The employee wasn’t being remiss by not checking my ID. Not in a werewolf bar. But he still wasn’t really doing his job.

I was twenty-one — barely — which is all humans would have cared about when allowing entrance to a drinking establishment. But the guy at the door in a shifter bar was supposed to turn away anyone without the ability to don fur and howl at the moon. And even though I was technically a shifter, my half-human heritage meant my wolf was too weak to rise up behind my eyes and prove her worth to the bouncer.

Good thing I was accustomed to faking it.

Surely you’ve read those romance novels where the hero never swears and is just dying to talk about his feelings. Or how about thrillers where the heroine has no body issues and jumps right into emotion-free sex. While there’s a time and a place for wish-fulfillment-based characters in both genres, most readers like to read about somebody with a little more meat on their metaphorical bones. Which means that authors are stuck trying to get into the minds of characters of the opposite sex.

I wish I could provide male authors with a quick checklist on how to write female characters and vice versa…because then I’d be rich and famous. (Although, guys, please do check out the Bechdel test which recommends that two female characters must at some point in your book talk about something other than a man.) Instead, I’m going to offer something quite simple — rather than engaging in small talk this holiday season, why not delve deeper into the male/female mind at your next party or family get-together?

I took my own advice to heart this past month and begged men and women alike to tell me how many crushes they’d had in their lives. The rules were simple — I wouldn’t tell them the data I’d thus far collected until they tallied up their own number. And they could define “crush” in whatever manner worked for them. The results shocked me. (I’m going to wait to put them in the comments section in case you want to play along. Guess now, then scroll down!)

Questions like this helped me delve deep enough into the male mind that I finally felt confident writing a first-person point-of-view story from a guy’s perspective. The result — Bloodling Wolf — got so much praise that I turned it into a serial. And I have to admit that whether or not I nailed every characteristic, it was amazingly freeing to write like a guy. My protagonist swears, doesn’t mind describing sex scenes, and never takes the world too seriously. Sounds like a vacation to this emotionally-charged female brain!

I’d be curious to hear from other authors. What tricks do you use to get into character when writing as the opposite sex? When you read romance novels and thrillers, do you cringe at those wooden men and women (respectively)? And which books do you feel really hit the nail on the head despite following a protagonist whose gender didn’t match that of the author?

(Oh, and by the way, Happy New Year!)